


small

by nikincafe



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: 1961, Crying, Early Days, Fluff, Hamburg, Hamburg Era, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, References to Toxic Masculinity, pre-fame, teddy boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 16:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21039350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikincafe/pseuds/nikincafe
Summary: Hamburg, spring 1961. John and Stuart are alone in their hotel room, where a discussion sparks quietly.Stuart stands on his toes and John looks down at him pitifully.Two hearts beating, one writhing and crying like a fountain, the other locked in a cage.





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**Author's Note:**

> Note: this takes place in the same verse as “face to black” (george/klaus) and shortly after the events of that fic. I decided not to make it a sequel because the content is too different, but see if you can spot some nods towards “fade to black” and george/klaus in this fic :)

“Maybe I should start wearing high heels.”

Stuart’s comment seems to light up out of nowhere, an indiscriminate spark suddenly coming forth into this tiny room. John doesn’t give any indication that he has heard, but Stuart knows he has.

April 1961. Their second visit to Hamburg. Stuart has already settled down at Astrid’s and has practically already moved in, but for some reason, he’s ended up back here with the rest of the band, just for a night at first, then a few more. It’s an improvement from their little tomb digs at the Bambi Kino last winter, but it’s not like the bar was very high to begin with. The lights still flicker, there are dead insects piled in the bulbs, the walls are cold and a little grimy, and the beds don’t creak as much but are still uncomfortable. In any case, usually George would be sleeping in this room with John, while Paul and Pete got the other room, but George has been elsewhere most days and the others don’t know—and haven’t bothered to find out—why. Stuart is curled up where he usually sleeps, but he can’t bring himself to doze off just yet.

“You thinkin’ ‘bout becoming a bird, Stu?” John grunts, not even opening his eyes. “First the haircut, now yer’ going on about high heels. I don’t reckon we’ll be seeing you donning a skirt onstage anytime soon, will we?”

“You might,” Stuart replies quietly, which is not the answer John was expecting. “Everyone has their digs at me when we’re on stage. You always find something to hate about me. I don’t think a skirt would make any particular difference.”

There’s a bitterness in his raspy voice that John hadn’t anticipated. Stuart is sweet, but he could be bitter, he could be upset, and often is, and for good reason too. 

“Fucks sake, don’t be like that,” John keeps his eyes shut but reaches up to rub the bridge of his nose in exasperation. After a short pause, he grins like a shark and makes a triumphant declaration. “If you start wearing high heels, I’ll make the rest of us wear ‘em too, so you’ll still be small compared to the rest of us.”

Finally, a chuckle. John gets a smug rise out of it, but quickly Stuart falls quiet again and the atmosphere deflates.

“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I were as tall as you.” There’s a vulnerable quality to his voice. Stuart, while soft-spoken and dreamy, usually has a firmness in his speech. But his typical self-assuredness is absent now. “Maybe I wouldn’t get jumped so often. I could have played sports with the other lads in primary school. But y’know, a guy can only dream.” He sits up and sighs. “I’m just… small. And so spindly-looking too, like a skeleton.”

“But George is spindly too. So’s Klaus.”

“But George isn’t finished growing yet, and he’s tall like the rest of you,” Stuart counters. “Klaus too, kind of. And he has broader shoulders, and a firm chest.”

“A firm chest? Wha’s that even mean?”

“It’s hard to tell sometimes because ‘e usually stands a little shrunken, ‘cause he’s shy, but when he’s in a good mood, Klaus stands up nice an’ tall with this alert look on his face and his chest looks… firm, I dunno what to call it. Confident. Come to think of it, he’s been looking more spiffy like that these days. I wonder what’s gotten into him?”

“Christ,” John shakes his head. “I don’t even know how you notice these sorts of things. It must be maddening, ‘aving to take in every little thing the way you do.”

“I’m an artist, it comes naturally,” Stuart says, and then his face melts into a smirk, though he knows John can’t see it. “And I also find that you tend to pick up on a lot more when you keep yer glasses on.”

Another pause. Stuart sometimes thinks about sleeping with the light on because it’s too quiet; the silence gets to him and he shifts uncomfortably. The buzz from the lightbulb would fill the space that is otherwise only lit by a mute moon. The thought of it makes him sigh with a slight homesickness. Gambier Terrace was never completely silent. The surrounding buildings weren’t tall enough to block out the wind that would howl through the neighborhood at night. The floorboards creaked, the walls whispered. and he could always hear people making noises in other rooms. Back at the Bambi Kino there was the cinema. The noisy fuckin’ cinema. But here? They’re too high up and out of reach. There are no noises.

“Come ‘ead,” John suddenly orders and gets up out of the bed. “Stand with me, on yer toes. See if heels would really help.”

Reluctantly, Stu slides out of his bed and walks across the room—not far—to stand in front of John, face to face. And now he’s glad for the darkness, with only moonlight to guide them, because otherwise John would see how easily his face reddens. So he puts himself up on his tip-toes, to imitate the effect of wearing heels, and is silently dismayed to find that he’s still too small to match his counterpart’s height.

John just shakes his head with a Cheshire grin. “Yer’ a lost cause, my boy. God help you when you kick it and it turns out you can’t reach the handle on the gate to heaven.”

Stuart opens his mouth to retort, but on his toes he loses his balance and topples over. Instinctively, John catches him and Stu collapses into John’s chest with a startled breath. John falls backward and lands back on his bed, the smaller boy cradled in his arms.  _ Fragile _ . John almost feels urged to check to make sure that Stuart isn’t broken somehow, as if he were handling a delicate vase or china plates. 

And then they stay like that. Stuart’s breath is slightly caught, a little anxious from the fall, but John is holding him and he feels safer. And John explores his counterpart’s figure with his hands, feeling his slimness and the droop of his bony shoulders and his straight yet oddly feminine hips. And Stuart is close enough that he can study his face without even having to squint; his cheekbones are high, feminine as well… and his mouth is slightly agape as he breathes gently. He’s a Greek statue come to life, salvaged from the burning empire and now seeking asylum right here in a dingy hotel room in Hamburg.

“Y’know what? Yer’ pro’ly too clumsy for high heels anyway,” John jokes gently, nudging Stuart’s shoulder. Stu responds by gingerly resting his head on John’s chest, still quiet… 

Then his body shakes gently and John hears him sniffle, and suddenly there are tears darkening into his t-shirt. 

“I’m so sick, Johnny,” Stuart cries softly. “I feel so small. My body feels so disgusting. I’m ill. It hurts all the time, and I don’t know why. I can’t bring meself to sleep, and when I do, I have nightmares. I’m so pathetic and sick.”

“Come on, come on, don’t cry…” He stresses, and he feels himself tightening his grip on Stuart’s hunched back. “You’re not… Well, you won’t ever grow taller, I suppose. But you’ll get better. I know you will.”

And here again, is where Stuart lies tangent from John. The smaller of the two, more vulnerable, more slight, appears unemotional from a distance but wears his heart on his sleeve. That heart is so big it throbs out of his chest, it flutters with a magnificent wingspan and dwarfs his tiny abdomen. His little body cannot contain it, and so forth it spills and writhes and causes him much pain. John’s heart is grand as well, but he has the form to match it. Furthermore, his ribs behave as a cage, encasing it and guarding it so that only the bravest and most enduring knight would even consider conquering it. Knights like Stuart, whose tears glimmer like lustrous armor in the moonlight.

“I’m so ill,” he laments over and over. “I’m ill, I’m ill, I’m ill. I’m going mad, John. I shouldn’t be here. They need to put me in the hospital, lock me up, quarantine—“

“ _ They _ will do nothing of the sort, love,” John scolds him again by flicking him in the face, to which the smaller of the two responds with a flinch and a small whimper. “So what, yer’ a bit of a hypochondriac and you didn’t drink enough milk as a child? We all get dealt shitty cards in life. Just look at me, son. I’m an orphan, can’t see for shit, I’ve squandered my future to play rock n’ roll in filthy German strip clubs…”

Stuart sniffles and wipes his nose with his sleeve. “That’s not true,” he protests weakly. “You make a great band. You’ll go on to do great things, you’ll live forever.”

“And so will you, Stu,” John grins with an almost menacing conviction. “Imagine it. Sutcliffe will be up there along with the great masters Van Gogh, Picasso, the whole lot of them. Doesn’t that just sound gear?”

Stuart slowly rests his head on John’s chest again, and he can’t see his face, but John is sure he can feel him smiling. “I can’t say that I’ve never entertained the idea…”

“And you won’t even need high heels to pull it off.”

“Well, it’s not out of the question, is it?”

“I suppose not,” John shrugs and gently ruffles Stuart’s hair. At this, the last of the tension leaves the artist’s muscles, and placidity overtakes them. John had made fun of Stuart’s new exi-style when he had first gotten it, but now he’s learned to be begrudgingly grateful for its existence, because it meant that John could handle Stuart’s hair without protest. The quiff was fantastic, bloody tall and fantastic, but it felt stiff and would fall over if you so much as grazed it, and it frustrated everyone to no end (all of them had hair like that, after all, and they understood the struggle).

In any case, John swears he can  _ hear _ Stuart purring when he runs his fingers through it. 

“Thank you,” Stu sighs softly and the two of them, unspoken, shift back onto the bed properly so that they could lie down, with the smaller enveloped in the larger’s broad arms and chest. “I don’t get to say it often, but—it really does mean a lot. That you can be nice to me. Sometimes.”

In response he only gets a gruff grunt: back to the typical John Lennon. But Stu can feel the other’s embrace grow a little tighter and a little warmer as he drifts off, and in the moment right before he falls into weightlessness, he feels his heart burst alive.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed! Please leave kudos and comments or subscribe if you’d like to see me post more often. <3


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